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4 





& J* J* ORIGIN OF THE j* & 

AMERICAN INDIGENES 



By Charles Hallock, M. A. 




WASHINGTON, D. C. '. 
GIBSON BROS., PRINTERS AND BOOKBINDERS, 
1902. 



SYLLABUS. 



The Indians, or Indigenes, of both North and South America, originated 
from a civilization of high degree which occupied the subequatorial belt 
some 10,000 years ago while the glacial sheet was still on. Population 
spread northward as the ice receded. Routes of exodus diverging from the 
central point of departure are plainly marked by ruins and records. The sub- 
sequent settlements in Arizona, New Mexico, Mexico, Colorado, Utah, and 
California, indicate the successive stages of advance, as well as the persis- 
tent struggle to maintain the ancient civilization against reversion and the 
catastrophes of nature. The varying architecture of the valleys, cliffs, and 
mesas is an intelligible expression of the exigencies which stimulated the 
builders. The gradual distribution of population over the higher latitudes 
in after years was supplemented by accretions from Europe and northern 
Asia at least 2,000 years before Columbus came. Wars and reprisals were 
the natural and inevitable results of a mixed and degenerating population 
with different dialects. The mounds which cover the mid-continental areas, 
isolated and in groups, tell the story thereof. The Korean immigration of 
the year 544, historically cited, which led to the founding of the Mexican 
Empire in 1325, was but an incidental contribution to the growing popula- 
tion of North America. So also were the very much earlier migrations from 
Central America by water across the Gulf of Mexico to Florida and 
Arkansas, and to the islands of the Caribbean Sea. 

In the course of the author's treatise corroborative evidences are pre- 
sented to verify the main proposition, the relevancy of which careful readers 
must fain admit. 

P. 

* c ««« **uho& 




THE 




mzxic&u 




Vol. XXIV. 



January and February, 1902. 



No. 1. 



THE ANCESTORS OF THE AMERICAN INDIGENES. 



By a-n intelligent adjustment of co-efficients, the author of 
this paper is convinced that he has been able to solve the racial 
problem of the Western Hemisphere: not only as respects the 
origin of the American Indigenes (miscalled Indians), but ap- 
proximately the antiquity of their progenitors whose ruined 
and silent cities, like those of Asia Minor, long since passed 
out of history, and whose massive pyramids, temples and pal- 
aces vie with those of the Old World, and are inferentially not 
only coeval with them but closely related. 

The nicety with which the parts fit is proof of the correct- 
ness of his thesis, which not only indicates the birthplace of 
the people from which the early inhabitants of North America 
sprung, but locates their point of departure (in Central Amer- 
ica) and the several divergent routes of exodus therefrom, 
northward, which eventuated in the distribution of the popu- 
lation over the greater part of the continent. And it is able to 
trace and establish these designated routes by mural inscrip- 
tions, petroglyphs, stone tablets, writings and traditions, the 
authenticity of which is self-evident and self-contained. The 
identity of the Indians with their ancient progenitors is further 
proven by relics, mortuary customs, linguistic similarities, 
plants and vegetables, and primitive industrial and mechanical 
arts which have remained constant throughout the ages. And 
not only is the progress of migration and distribution intelli- 
gently traced, but the incidental metamorphoses and vicissi- 
tudes, as well as the causes of that degeneration which, in the 
course of the long period of transformation, ultimately touched 
the level of savagery in many instances. 

The consensus of opinion among advanced ethnologists is 
that no sufficient reason can be shown for a separate racial 
classification of the three Americas, and the entire proposition 
may be summarized in the abstract which follows, wherein the 
collater has simply gathered and arranged the materials which 



BY CHARLES HALLOCK, M. B. S. 



4 



THE AMERICAN ANTIQUARIAN. 



have been unearthed by scientists who have been working for 
years on homogeneous but independent lines. Biblical testi- 
mony and modern research are shown to corroborate each 
other, and their essence, so far as it has been accepted by 
painstaking scholars, is herewith presented : 

Imprimis: In its primordial state the Globe was only in 
small part tenable. Fertile and forested areas were few and 
geographically far apart. Interminable ice fields and barren 
wastes predominated. Oceans covered four-fifths of the sur- 
face. Later on, but long anterior to the days of the traditional 
Adam, there existed (Genesis iv. 16-17) autogenous, independ- 
ent and contemporaneous groups of men, with their associated 
flora and fauna which were distributed amongr the geographical 
areas : a conservative provision of the Scheme of Creation 
whereby the species were preserved, so that when cataclysms 
or other disasters occurred in one division resources for repro- 
duction and perpetuation were available in others. [The desert 
of Sahara was once fertile and populous. Greenland teemed 
with luxuriant flora and fauna. Babylon is buried under sands. 
Scarcely 300 years were required to convert a large portion of 
Spain, the fairest of the Iberian plains, into an arid wilderness, 
after the Moors were driven out. The moving sand dunes of 
our own continent have buried towns and fertile tracts, and 
forests, in some instances sixty feet deep, as on Roanoke 
Island, within a comparatively brief space of time.] Each fer- 
tile tract was in itself a veritable " Garden of Eden" whose 
animal and vegetable output in due course of time spread 
from near by to remoter regions. One of these autogenous 
nurseries, with its perfected species, was located in Central 
America,* and was doubtless contemporary with similar nu- 
clei in Asia and Africa, the mural inscriptions and anaglyphs 
of Uxmall, Palenque, Copan, Chichen-Itza and a score of other 
places, demonstrating by inference, analogies and graven tes- 
timony that they were coeval with Egypt, Chaldea, Phoenicia, 
Tyre, Palmyra, Carthage and Mycaene, and enjoyed commercial 
intercourse with them to at least as recent a date as King Solo- 
mon's time, when, according to Scripture records, vessels return- 
ing from triennial voyages to the uttermost parts of the earth 
brought cargoes of gold, silver, apes, and peacocks. (Kings: 
chap, x., verse 22,) Egypt was the cradle of an ancient civil- 
ization for ages before the Hebrews went into bondage, while 
the country traversed by the Isaaelites in their wilderness jour- 
neyings was interspersed with the walled cities of many pre- 
historic kingdoms, tribes and clans, whom they encountered. 

During the natural processes of adaptation and develop- 

* See " Exiles from Eden," translated by Le Plongeon from tablets of 
Chichen-Itza. 



ANCESTORS OF THE AMERICAN INDIGENES. 



S 



ment, great climatic changes took place in all parts of the 
globe, involving corresponding fertility or sterility, with their 
natural concomitants. When regions were habitable they were 
inhabited; when they would not support life it departed. So 
it came to pass, during the second glacial epoch, when the 
great boreal ice sheet covered one-half of the North American 
continent, as far south as the present sites of Philadelphia and 
St. Louis, and the glaciated portions were as untenab'e and 
unfit for human occupation as the snow cap of Greenland is 
today, that aggregations of population clustered around the 
equatorial zone, because the climatic conditions were conge- 
nial. (Note the antipodal as well as the isthmian location of 
Egypt and Central America, both equidistant from the equator, 
and one to each hemisphere.) And inasmuch as civilization 
the world over clings to the temperate climates and thrives 
there best, we are not surprised to learn that communities far 
advanced in arts and architecture built and occupied those 
great cities in Yucatan, Honduras, Guatemala, and other Cen- 
tral American States, whose populations once numbered hun- 
dreds of thousands, and whose massive ruins of stone and con- 
crete mark hundreds of sites.f In Yucatan alone, where the 
highest culture was developed, there were fifty-one cities. The 
explorations of Stephens, Le Plongeon and others, have opened 
out the secrets of these mural wastes, and archaeologists have 
coincidently been excavating their desert counterparts in the 
old world to verify their relationship. Anaglyphs of a long 
forgotten people have been deciphered, and the revelation is 
like an open book. 

An approximate date when this civilization was at the acme 
of its glory would be about 10,000 years ago, as established by 
observations upon the recession of the existing glacier fronts, 
which are known to drop back twelve miles in one hundred 
years. J 

How many centuries previously civilization had endured is 
a problem hard to solve, because it is not within mortal ken to 
know how long the ice sheet remained in bulk before it began 
to melt faster than it accumulated. But it is obvious that dur- 
ing its continuance its entire area was as much of a terra incognita 
as Greenland is now, though men have always dwelt on the 
margin of the ice sheet as the Eskimo do at present. 

With the gradual withdrawal of the ice sheet the climate 

t These cities were not all under one government or federation, for 
their climax was during the epoch of petty kingdoms contemporary with 
the Hebrew exodus from Egypt. 

% Vancouver, the navigator, speaks of his inability to enter Glacier Bay 
Alaska, in 1763. It was then but an indentation of the coast hardly notice- 
able, but during the last decade was navigated by large steamers for more: 
than twelve miles inland. 



6 



THE AMERICAN ANTIQUARIAN. 



grew proportionately milder, and flora and fauna moved simul- 
taneously northward. Coincidently, the solar heat at the equa- 
tor, which had before been tolerable, became oppressive; large 
areas of agricultural land became dessicated; quarrels and jeal- 
ousies arose; the overcrowded population grew restless, and an 
impulse of extradition supervened which has probably had no 
parallel. Some emigrants went to South America and settled 
there, carrying their customs, arts, ceremonial rites, hieroglyphs, 
architecture, etc., and an immense exodus took place into Mex- 
ico and Arizona, which ultimately extended westward up the 
Pacific coast to Alaska. Absence of glaciation on that side of 
the continental divide made exploration and settlement in that 
direction easy and attractive, and the grafts so set have kept 
their civilization better than any other congenital offsets. [At 
that period the Rocky Mountain chain was not much of a ridge, 
and a great salt estuary or arm of the sea, larger than Hudson 
Bay, covered the Great Plains, and washed the margin of the 
melting ice sheet whose main fluvial outlet became the Missis- 
sippi River, Gigantic Saurians sported in the saline waves 
and mastodons and other grotesque land animals fed on the 
huge calamites. tree ferns, and rushes which fringed its border. 
When lakes Erie and Ontario receded 170 feet the big estuary 
ran dry, and the saurian tribe succumbed from withdrawal 
of customary food and environment. At that period human 
beings occupied the southern shores of the estuary, and man 
and mastodon were contemporary. Palaeontologists have dis- 
covered, near Kimmswick, Missouri, human remains and 
flint and iron arrow heads among the well preserved bones 
and teeth of primitive bisons {bos Latifrons) and mastodons 
which had been driven off a precipice, after the practice 
maintained until a recent date by modern Indians in pursuit 
of buffalo. This "find" is in evidence that the period of 
the battue was while the glacial sheet prevailed near that 
latitude. The use of stone arrows and other implements in 
no wise establishes a primitive or savage condition. White 
men have imitated them for generations, even to this day. Frost 
easily affects metals, and in frigid regions only flint or ivory 
will stand for nine months of the year.] Coincidently a 
northward migration took place through New Mexico to 
southeastern Colorado, and another exodus still more direct 
across the Gulf of Mexico in flotillas from Yucatan to the 
main land, and thence due northward between the 87th and 
97th meridians, extending at last as far up as Lake Supe- 
rior, the progressive trend being punctuated at succeeding 
stages by defensive earthworks whose construction was at- 
tributed until recently to a hypothetical people termed Mound 
Builders. Great numbers of emigrants also went to the An- 
tilles, the Bahamas and other neighboring islands, where 



ANCESTORS OF THE AMERICAN INDIGENES. 



7 



colonies had already been planted, and thence to Florida, 
and from there were disseminated all over the eastern part 
of the continent, § as fast as it became habitable. They did 
not settle due north of the Arkansas because the climate was 
less propitious and the country bare of watercourses. The 
principal outpost of their occupation in that direction was 
twenty miles south of the Big Bend, the stone ruins of which 
are very striking, even now. There are hundreds of large 
flat rocks on the bluffs of the Little Arkansas, about four 
miles west of the Santa Fe crossing, whicn are covered with 
hieroglyphics deeply cut, and similar to those along the 
headwaters of the Gila in Arizona, and prototypes of those 
at Uxmall and Palenque. They are thirty-four miles from 
the edge of what was the big estuary — now the grand prairie. 
Vessels from the Yucatan peninsula, after crossing the Gulf 
of Mexico, would land at the "Big Bluff," which was the 
escarpment of the rolling country extending eastward 
lo the settlements. Trade between Yucatan and Cuba 
was maintained through the ages. Distinct communities like 
the Colusas, Tequitas and Timacuas, occupied Florida for a 
time and in turn became extinct. Their mural remains and 
relics are abundant (Cushing). They and the several mil- 
lions of islanders whom the Spaniards managed to annihilate 
four centuries ago, all had the same direct lineage from 
Central America, except the Caribs, who came from South 
America later on (Ober). 

These initial migrations took place in the early history of 
ihe glacial period. In subsequent epochs, when the ice 
sheet had withdrawn from large areas, as far at least as up 
to the latitude of the Great Lakes, there were immense in- 
fluxes of people from Asia via Bering Strait and the Kam- 
chatkan Peninsula on the Pacific side, and from northeastern 
Europe via Greenland on the Atlantic side east, (that sub- 
arctic tract being hospitable then,) and these continued, equa 
passu, as the earth became uncovered, distributing them- 
selves over the country by available watercourses, which 
were then larger and more numerous than now, until large 
communities occupied its most attractive uplands, notably 
the region south of Lakes Erie and Ontario, as is made evi- 
dent by the abandoned copper mines of Lake Superior and 
the many mounds and defensive earthworks in Ohio and 1 
contiguous territory. The occupants at that period possessed 
many of the arts and appliances of civilization, for peace 



§ Bodies of twelve Indians, killed in battle near Turner's Falls, Mass., 
in 1704. and buried with their feet resting on a circle five feet in diameter,, 
the heads radiating like spokes of a wheel — recalling the famous Aztec 
calendar stone — were dug up in 1882. 



8 



THE AMERICAN ANTIQUARIAN. 



had reigned continuously for ages among them, and they 
had remained unmolested until the incursions of barbarian 
hordes from the northwest and southeast made the construc- 
tion of military defences a necessity. The date of this in- 
vasion can be approximately determined by the beach ter- 
races of the great lakes, the higher of the two being 170 
feet above the present lake level, and 30 feet above the 
level of the intervening land, A conspicuous section of this 
ancient shore line extends for 78 miles from the Genessee 
river to Lexington, in New York State. South of it mounds 
and defensive earthworks exist in great numbers, but there 
are none on the flood plain between it and the present shore 
line, nor on the north shores. Large communities also 
dwelt upon navigable watercourses and estuaries of the North 
Atlantic ocean, and the historians of the 16th century speak 
of abundant evidences of a preoccupation numerically large. 
Governor Winslow, of Massachusetts upon his visit to Mas- 
sasoit in 1621, found traces of many ancient towns along 
the rivers, with clearings on both sides. "Thousands of 
men," he wrote in his report, " have lived there which died 
in a great plague not long since: and pity it was to see so 
many goodly fields, and so well seated, without the men to 
dress the same." Again: "As we passed along we observed 
that there were few places by the river but had been inhab- 
ited." So also in the middle west, they dwelt in large vil- 
lages until they were finally dispossessed and driven out by 
the whites within the closing decades of the last century. 

As regards the immigration from Asia, authentic records 
still extant extend back into the 6th century as early as the 
year 544, which is the date of the overthrow of the Tsin 
dynasty in China, at which time the Nestorian and other 
Christian colonies in the Celestial Empire were obliterated. 
A granite memorial of that Nestorian occupation still stands. 
Chronology is quite explicit as to the occurrences between 
this date and 1325, when the City of Mexico was founded. 

"Of the five tribes which constitute the present Mexican 
nation, the Toltecs first made their appearance fifty miles to 
the west of the City of Mexico in 648. They declared them- 
selves repelled from a country lying to the northwest of 
the river Gila, called by them Huehuetlapallan This mi- 
gration commenced in 544, and its progress year by year is 
described in Mexican paintings. * * About 100 years after 
the Toltecs had left Huehuetlapallan, the Chiehimecs took 
possession of it and held it 500 years. They came from 
Amaque Mecan, a country lying far to the north and occupy- 
ing eighteen months in migration. After five centuries they 
evacuated and joined the Toltecs in Mexico in 1 170. The Nah 
uatlacs made their first appearance from the north in 1196. 



ANCESTORS OF THE AMERICAN INDIGENES. g 

The Aztecs, the immediate progenitors of the Mexicans, dwelt 
in a country called Azatlan, to the north of the Cilifornia Gulf, 
in 1 160, probably near the 56th parallel, where the natives show 
a predilection for hieroglyphic paintings. After journeying 
5fty-six years — divided into three grand periods — the Aztecs 
arrived at Zumpanco, in the Valley of Mexico, in 1216. The 
first stage of this migration was to the south of the Rio Nabajoa, 
one of the branches of the Colorado, in 35 0 ; the second to the 
north of the Rio Gila, in 33 0 30', where the ruins called Las 
Casas Grandes by the Spaniards, were discovered in 1773.* 
The third station was in lat. 30 0 30', near Yanos, 350 miles 
southeast of Las Casas Grandes. In 1245 they arrived Chapul- 
tepec, within two miles of the future site of Mexico, and in 1325 
they built a great temple which was the foundation of the City 
of Mexico and the beginning of the dynasty of Mexican Kings. 
It also ended the Aztec migration. This temple was of wood, 
and was subsequently replaced by stone. 

It is believed that the progenitors of these ancestors of 
the Mexicans were an Asiatic colony from Corea, which 
was at that time tributary to the Chinese Empire, a fact 
which accounts for coincidence of dates in the first half of 
the 6th century, and this opinion is confirmed by Chinese 
manuscripts as well as by striking similarities of appear- 
ance, language and customs, and a proficiency in the arts 
and architecture. Their writing was in hieroglyphics exclu- 
sively, and this medium of communication is spread all over 
the continent. History shows that the Coreans migrated 
to escape tyranny, undertaking a sea voyage of nine weeks 
to the northeast. No matter who first peopled Central 
America, the Coreans certainly were in communication with 
America as far back as the second year of the dynasty of 
Tsin, Emperor of China, who declared war against Corea. 
Migrants were able to maintain the high civilization of their 
forbears as long as their basic relation and environment 
remained unchanged, a postulate which is abundantly at- 
tested by archaeological evidence, as well as by the endur- 
ing testimony of the petroglyphs. But finally came those 
stupendous terrestrial dislocations, upheavals, emergencies, 
drouths, denudations, and associated dynamic phenomena, 
which punctuated the lapse of geological time and changed 
the coatour of the continent. By the same great cataclysm 

* Note by the Author. — It has taken 2,000 to destroy Babylon the 
Great, whose most mighty and conspicuous remnant at the present cay is 
the ruin known as Birs Nimroud, whi<~h is of much the same proportion 
an I size, and in much the same condition now as the Casa Grande, climates 
he rg similar. Logically, the Casa Grande country and its people were in 
the acme of their glory 2.000 years ago. At that time the whole region 
swarmed with population, 



10 



THE AMERICAN ANTIQUARIAN. 



which broke up the ''foundations of the great deep," ac- 
cording to the Scripture, and inundated so large a part of 
the globe and its antedeluvian fauna and flora, the fructi- 
fying rivers of Central America were engulfed, and the 
acequias, aqueducts and irrigating canals were destroyed 
or rendered useless. Some disjointed records of this over- 
whelming catastrophe are inscribed upon pyramids, temple 
walls, monoliths, and porticos of those massive ruins which 
attest to their extinguished greatness, while oral traditions, 
next in historical value to the libraries which Cortez and 
his fanatical priests destroyed, have been transmitted down 
the centuries, even to southwestern Indians of the pres- 
ent day. Drouth, famine, malignant diseases, persistent 
internecine wars, and ultimate depopulation supervened, 
and after persistent efforts to maintain themselves on the 
home sites, the discomfited survivors scattered, even to far 
off Alaska, and up the eastern slope of the continental ridg"e 
to the mouth of the Mackenzie river, leaving traces of their 
successive occupations all along the Pacific coast and the 
mid-continental route, not only in memorials of massive 
masonry and exqusite pottery, but in linguistic similarities, 
religious practices, mortuary rites, superstitions, social 
habits, oral traditions, and physical resemblances of a 
marked character. For many centuries large communities 
tarried in Mexico, New Mexico and Arizona, sections of 
which were populous up to the arrival of Coronado in 1540, 
but finally aridity of the soil, caused in large part by forest 
denudation, frequent tidal waves, the deflection of surface 
waters into subterranean rock fissures, the merciless raids 
of the Spaniards and internecine wars, scattered them over 
the lava beds and alkaline wastes of sage brush and cactus, 
to eke out a precarious livelihood with their starvling 
flocks. The remnants ultimately betook themselves to the 
cliffs and mesas which they fortified and attempted to sub- 
sist on crops which they forced from scantily irrigated gar- 
dens on the arid plains below. This for a distressful period, 
and then northward again to more peaceful and fertile local- 
ities in eastern Colorado, where melting snows from the 
uplifted continental divide afforded perennial moisture. 
Here they maintained a long protracted status as agricul- 
turists and shepherds, establishing* thrifty towns and vil- 
lages, of which a few remain to this day as "pueblos." 
Records of their vicissitudes and dire extremity are pecked 
upon many a neighboring rock — of the continued attacks 
and defences, and how the cliff dwellers were finally cut 
off by their enemies, and how few escaped. 

Memorabilia of permanent occupancy in bas relief, sculp- 
ture and statues, occur everywhere among the ruins of the 



ANCESTORS OF THE AMERICAN INDIGENES. 



ii 



exhumed cities of Yucatan, and are repeated all over Cen- 
tral America and parts of South America, while pictographs 
and rock inscriptions of later periods mark the exodus and 
advances of the emigrants along - the trails which diverge 
from the point of departure through Mexico and Arizona, 
and thence northwestward up the Pacific, or due north to 
Colorado, and thence eastward along- the Arkansas river 
across the great plains, or northeasterly across the Rio 
Grande through Southern Texas to Arkansas. The hiero- 
glyphs include outlines of animals, clan marks, totems, se- 
cret society insignia, challenges, defiances, taunts (since 
practiced by all Indian tribes), cautions against ambus- 
cades and natural obstacles, directions to water holes, 
camping grounds and rendezvous, as well as mention of 
skirmishes, forced marches, misadventures and special 
events, practices which were in vogue in Palestine and 
Egypt in Biblical times, f On one rock in Rowe Canon, Ari- 
zona, is a petroglyph representing emigrants driving their 
flocks before them. It is noteworthy that many of the 
glyphs indicate starvation. Cypher characters were much 
in vogue. The older glyphs are the most geometrical and 
are often symbolical. Many have a religious significance. 
Later ones represent natural objects. Leopards, serpents, 
crocodiles, elephants, fishes, ravens, macaws and vultures 
appear everywhere. The last three were sacred birds there, 
and are so esteemed in Alaska today. In Montana the 
Crow Indians (Apsarikas, ) retain the raven as their tribal 
totem. Taken as a whole, pictographs (which, by the way, 
are scattered all over the continent to the number of sev- 
eral thousand) are the reflections of the old-time hiero- 
glyphs found on the Sinai Peninsula as long ago as the 
wilderness journey of the Israelites, and antedating it no one 
knows how long. These rock pictures and mural etchings 
gradually gave place to alphabets which were invented, 
but in that period this expression of language constituted 
the universal medium of intercourse throughout the world 
on both hemispheres. It was not confined to rock faces 
and fixed walls, but was traced on portable tablets of stone 
and metal, and on papyrus, bark and parchment. The Cen- 
tral Americans and Mexicans used sheets of paper made by 
macerating the leaves of the century plant, just as the 
Egyptians used papyrus, beating out the fiber and sizing 
with a white varnish. Each volume or book was a long 
sheet folded backward and forward like a screen or map, 
and bound by attaching boards to the outer folds. Both 
sides of the paper were used. Many books were made of 

t [See Old Testament. Prime, Warburton, et a/.] 



L.oFC. 



12 



THE AMERICAN ANTIQUARIAN. 



it, and of these the British Museum, the Vatican at Rome- 
and the Trocadero at Paris, contain four specimens, By a 
strange chance a fifth specimen, six by ten inches, was dis- 
covered near Fort Fairfield, Iowa, in 1897, while excavating 
for the city water works, and is now in the Ohio State 
Archaeological museum at Andover. Undoubtedly a full 
history of events was of record up to the coming of Cortez, 
who is is said to have destroyed more valuable records of 
an antedeluvian civilization than were consumed in the 
Alexandrian Library, of which many were probably dupli- 
cates. 

The advent of the Spaniards and their ruthless quest for 
gold broke into the bucolic life of the Pueblos. Many were 
exterminated, while others, harassed and impoverished, aban- 
doned agriculture in despair and took to the chase for a liveli- 
hood. From that to semi-savagery the lapse was easy; a con- 
dition which was aggravated by the religious superstitions 
which they retained, involving human sacrifice, self-torture, 
immolation of war prisoners and sundry barbarous ceremonies 
which date back to earliest times, and obtain even now in iso- 
lated parts of North America. The sun dance of the Plains 
Indians is a relic of the sun worship of Chichen-Itza and Peru, 
with its attendant cruelties. All the Indian tribes burned their 
captives on occasion — a survival of ancient rites. 

The introduction of horses by Coronado* at this juncture 
was a godsend to the afflicted people, for it not only enabled 
them to chase the big game of the Rocky Mountain foothills, 
but it made long journeys possible. It enabled them to follow 
the erratic movements of the buffalo into the Great Plains, 
whose interior until then had been unoccupied by men. The 
Aztecs and "pueblos" had no big working dogs in those days — 
no dogs at all excepting the hairless Chihuahua dogs, which 
oftener went into the pot than into harness. Lack of trans- 
portation had been an impassable barrier to travel across the 
prairies, as well as to the movement of large forces; but with 
horses a man could subsist off the country as well as carry sup- 
plies. In prairie parlance, he was "footloose" and independ- 
ent. To be put afoot, away from water and the means of pur- 
suing game, was death: a proverb current among plainsmen, 
Indians, and trappers up to the middle of the 19th century. 
The surest way to cripple an enemy was to steal his pack 

* Wherever pictographs of the horse appear the representations must 
have been done subsequent to the advent of Coronado.or the conquestadoros 
of Florida. There are no horse portraits in Arizona and vicinity, nor up the 
Pacific coast, but they are frequent in Texas and in the trans-Mississippi 
region. The domestic horse (not Ephiftfius, the diminutive, quarternary ani- 
mal which was indigenous,) was introduced into Florida from Santo Do- 
mingo by the Spaniards early in the 15th century, as well as into South 
America, where it spread in fifteen years as far south as Patagonia. 



ANCESTORS OF THE AMERICAN INDIGENES. 



*3 



horses and saddle horses. So valuable did horses become that 
during the subsequent three centuries horse-stealing was a uni- 
versal industry, and a man's wealth was estimated by the num- 
ber of his ponies. Very soon after the introduction of the 
domestic horse, emigrants began to cross the Rio Grande into 
southwestern Texas, making their way eventually into Arkan- 
sas, while other parties from Colorado followed the Arkansas 
river through Kansas into Missouri. 

In Missouri and Arkansas the excavated remains of houses 
formed of upright posts with wattles interwoven to form the 
walls, are of the same pattern as the jacals of Mexico, Yucatan, 
Guatemala and Honduras, as well as of southeastern Alaska, 
similarity of construction being good proof that they were 
built by cognate people. That the Comanches are their de- 
generated kinsfolk is proved by their tribal totems and symbols, 
which are similar to those pecked into the rocks at Eagle Pass 
on the Rio Grande, and one has only to descend into the river 
bottoms at low water to see the native women at this day wash- 
ing and beating their clothes upon the rocks just as they do in 
Central America, and on the Ganges in Asia. 

Untold and uncalculated years it took for the Central 
American migration to reach the western verge of the Great 
Plains, which had emerged and grown to grass during the 
interval since it was the quarternary floor of tne sea. For 
nearly four centuries their polyglot descendants, who were 
dubbed aborigines by European explores, have been an ethno- 
logical puzzle to the world; but time seems to have solved the 
problem. The hypothesis of the reversion is easy. Their pro- 
genitors, like all pioneers, unquestionably took with them all nec- 
essary "store clothes, "tools, seeds, mechanical appliances, and 
domestic utensils; but afterthey were isolated from the parent 
stock and base of supplies, they learned to sub ititute makeshifts 
for whatever was worn out or lost. Dresses Df skins, furs, and 
plaited grasses replaced their home garments, and implements 
of stone, horn, bone, shell and ivory, took the place of their 
original tools of iron, bronze and copper. Some of the more 
intelligent and energetic discovered mines of various ores, and 
worked them in a rude fashion for awhile, like those at Lake 
Superior, but the industry was finally abandoned because it 
was easier and cheaper to use what was handiest. Metal orna- 
ments, pottery, baskets, footgear, and woven fabrics were re- 
tained the longest, because they were indispenable. The man- 
ufacture of these was an art that could not be lost. Reversion 
is not necessarily a slow process. It depends largely upon the 
environment. Intercourse brightens intellect. Isolation clogs 
it, and will sometimes banish it. There are today among the 
sea islands of South Carolina the grandchildren of ante-bellum 
negroes whose inane articulations are unintelligible to any but 



i 4 



THE AMERICAN ANTIQUARIAN. 



their own kin — a lapse of less than half a century. Those of 
our so-called aborigines who occupy the eastern part of the 
continent have been classed, taxonomically, as Algonguins; 
those of the mid-continental district between the Gulf coast 
and Lake Superior, as Appalachians. Collectively, they may 
be treated of as Forest Indians. The larger , portion of them 
came in the course of years to follow the retreating buffalo 
westward irom Ohio, Virginia and Illinois to the verge of the 
Great Plains, and there they encountered a wild and nomadic 
people of many tribes and dialects like themselves, and similar 
in features, habits, characteristics and superstitions, who had 
followed the buffalo eastzvard across the plains from Colorado 
and Texas! But neither knew that they had a common an- 
cestry. 

The migrations of the American Bisons in their relation to 
the antecedents and distribution of the aboriginal population 
is of absorbing interest, because they furnish the key to one 
important section of the ethnic problem. Although these 
primitive cattle (bos latifrons) at one time covered two-fifths 
(?) of the continent, according to credible data, including, 
forest, plain and mountain park, it was primarily a woods 
ranger, inhabiting the forested regions during the period when 
the great plains were submerged. Later on this lacustrine 
expanse was replaced by grass prairie,f to which the animals 
finally resorted for improved forage as well as to escape pur- 
suit from the huntsmen on either side. There they were com- 
paratively unmolested until the horse came. Historically, the 
first organized buffalo hunts were instituted in the southwest 
by refugees from Mexico, as related by Castaneda, the annalist 
of the Coronado expedition in 1540. Immense hunting parties 
of 1,000 or more, including women and children, with provis- 
ions for months, would travel an "eight days' journey" (some 
fifty miles or so) into the plains, and bring back robes, pem- 
mican and meat, just as was done three centuries later in the 
antipodal land of the Dakotas. These finally cut loose from 
civilization altogether as soon as supplied with horses, and be- 
came nomads, living in the saddle and spreading northward 
and eastward as inducements offered, until they finally overran 
the entire grass region up to the border of Manitoba, and east 
to the Mississippi river. In course of time they came to be 
known colloquially as Horse Indians. [Mexican hieroglyphs 
appear on the Mouse River in Manitoba.] 

The collision of these nomadic horse Indians with the more 



f Prairies in the early stages of formation may now be seen and studied 
on the borders of Albemarle Sound, in North Carolina, where the same 
physiological processes are taking place today which occurred when the 
great plains were reclaimed from the ocean, 



ANCESTORS OF THE AMERICAN INDIGENES. 



5 



sedentary forest tribes, who clustered in villages and had no 
horses, and have not had to this day, and the continuous strug- 
gle for territorial possession and hunting prerogatives which 
followed, account in large part for the suggestive zone of 
mounds, already mentioned, which spans the width of ten me- 
ridians and extends from the Gulf of Mexico to Lake Superior. 
Outside of this zone there are no similar mounds east of the 
Rio Grande.J The art of construction was brought from Mex- 
ico and Florida by the descendants of the ancients who built 
the pyramids in Egypt and Central America, and in Mexico. 
Pyramidal forms and animal mounds prove this assertion. 
For three hundred and fifty years this broad territorial strip 
was disputed ground, the principal seat of the struggle being 
in Ohio, where there is every evidence of pitched battles hav- 
ing been fought in front of intrenchments, and in whose vicin- 
ity there are great tumuli where hosts of the slain were buried, 
some of their bones being foundwith flint and stone arrow heads 
sticking in them. These midland mounds have been geograph- 
ically assorted into three groups, the first extending from the 
sources of the Allegheny to the waters of the Missouri-Missis- 
sippi, the second occupying the Mississippi valley, vaguely so 
defined, and the third stretching from South Carolina to Texas. 
The most northwestern are on the river bluff at St. Paul, Minn. 
None are found on the plains. The forest Indians never in- 
vaded the plains until they were banished there by the whites 
in the 19th century. Distributively the mounds show quite 
exactly the area of territory fought over, their sinuous or waver- 
ing lines or series indicating the varying fortunes of the com- 
batants. Circumvallations of earth in the shape of circles, 
ellipses, polygons and rectangular parallelograms, often inclose 
from twenty to forty acres, and display much military engi- 
neering skill, Mounds are of diverse sizes and shapes from 
five to thirty feet high, and were used for burial and sacrificial 
purposes, for dykes, as sites for temples and dwellings, as 
refuges from inundations, as amphitheaters for ball games, and 
for ornamental purposes, as in public parks and gardens of the 
present day. Many in the semblance of elephants, leopards, 
turtles, rats, snakes, deer and the like, were copied from the 
Aztec and Toltec gardens, and from others extant in the Zuni 
and Mohave country. They were reproduced just as we copy 
patterns from the old world. On Vancouver Island is the re- 
production in earth of a string of grampuses (a "study from 
nature") pursued by a canoe, whose prow is of the present 
Haidah type so common on the coast, and not unlike some 
South Sea Island types. Those mounds which were used for 

J As a matter of fact, the whole world's population from earliest record 
have been mound builders, 



i6 



THE AMERICAN ANTIQUARIAN. 



defensive purposes were usually palisaded, as is proved by 
burnt and decayed portions of stockades which are often ex- 
humed. Many are associated with cemented cisterns, crema- 
tories and ovens, having fireplaces underneath. They are the 
work of both combatants, but the art was learned centuries be- 
ore in the south and southwest. Perforated mussel shells, 
conches, copper helmets, mummy cases, passport sticks, pot- 
tery and vases of scoria and terra cotta, implements of stone 
and bronze, stone jars, obsidian knives, gems exquisitely 
wrought, amulets of gold, bone fleshers for dressing skins, and 
copper pipe bowls decorated with human heads of a type like 
those of modern Indians, identify their original possessors as 
well as their congenital predecessors, from whom they acquired 
the art. (Mrs. Kunzie, of Umatilla, Oregon, has gathered in 
Klickatat county in the State of Washington, a museum of 
Aztec relics embracing obsidian knives of the most beautiful 
w r orkmanship, obsidian arrows, a warclub of bronze, exquisitely 
wrought stone gods, ornate gems, and, what is most suggestive, 
a carved stone metate or corn mill.) 

When the plainsmen first appeared, the foresters were dis- 
posed to be friendly, but as soon as they encroached too far 
they stood them off, Algonquins and Appalachians making 
common cause against their enemies. Finally, at the end of 
three and a half centuries, the) 7 were driven back to their old 
stamping ground, the prairies, permanently repulsed, the last 
battle of the interminable series having been fought in 1857 
between the Sioux and the Chippewas (representative bands) 
on the terraced shore of the glacial lake Agassiz, in Minnesota, 
A description of this battle, by the aged chief Osh Wash, a 
survivor of the fight, is of especial value as showing the strat- 
egy and methods of defence practiced by the mound builders 
and the plan of their fortifications. 

This venerable Indian was on his way to attend the annual 
pow-wow at Turtle Mountain in commemoration of the event, 
which took place on the Sand Ridge (mound) between the 
stage half-way house and the Two Rivers Crossing, in Rosseau 
county, the battle ground being plainly marked to this day by 
the remains of breastworks behind which these hereditary ene- 
mies waged a week's fight of cunning and skill, coupled at 
times with desperate hand-to-hand conflicts. It was in this 
fight that Chief Osh Wash lost his scalp, as the large circle of 
hairless skin on the top of his cranium gives ample evidence. 
The Sioux war party invaded the hunting grounds of the Chip- 
pewas, who inhabited the shores of the Lake of the Woods on 
the American side. The latter had been apprised of the pro- 
jected raid and selected a location on the natural ridge, which 
afforded the only natural road of ingress and egress, being nar- 



ANCESTORS OF THE AMERICAN INDIGENES. 



7 



row with impassable muskegs on either side. Then they threw 
up breastworks on the open ground at a point which enabled 
them to guard against an attack in their rear. When the ap- 
proach of the Sioux was made known, the Chippewas laid in 
ambush farther west on the east bank of Two Rivers, and when 
most of the Sioux had crossed over they were suddenly at- 
tacked and several Sioux were killed and a number wounded. 
Then the Chippewas gradually fell back, and a running fight 
was kept up until they reached their breastwork fortress. The 
Sioux made an attack that night upon the entrenched enemy, 
but were driven back, the loss of life being heavy on both sides. 
The Sioux occupied the next three nights in erecting counter 
breastworks about 150 yards from the entrenched Chippewas, 
a work which was attended with the loss of several lives. Under 
the protection of their trench the Sioux erected a second breast- 
work fifty yards nearer, and then dug a tunnel up to the breast- 
work of the Chippewas. The top of the ground being a tough 
grass sod, underlaid by gravel and sand, the task of digging a 
tunnel was not difficult. On the night of the seventh day the 
Sioux made a sudden but not unexpected attack upon the 
Chippewas, and the hand-to-hand conflict was fierce, bloody 
and decisive. The decimated ranks of the Sioux, and their 
lack of provisions, gave their enemies a slight advantage. The 
Sioux were driven back with a loss of over half their -number, 
and the Chippewas followed up their success by a relentless 
pursuit until the last of the Sioux braves escaped across Two 
Rivers. This memorable battle the Sioux never afterwards 
attempted to avenge. 

Many such by-gone events are memorialized by rock inscrip- 
tions all over the country, of which several thousand have been 
located and enumerated; and the natives often gather at one 
or other of these stations, just as our own people assemble at 
Plymouth Rock, Ticonderoga, or at more recently erected mon- 
oliths at Gettysburg, Lookout Mountain, and other battlefields 
of our late war. Records are also kept on painted elk and buf- 
falo robes and rolls of bark. 

Every new archaeological discovery adds to the ana- 
logues which go to make up testimony to establish the 
more than hypothetical origin of our American Aborigines, 
and the close relations between their ancestors of Central 
America and the peoples of Egypt and and Asia. Flat- 
tening of the cranium is common to Peru, Bolivia, Jamaica and 
Montana. The islanders of Jamaica wore feather mantles like 
the Mexicans, and helmets of feathers like the war bonnets of 
the plains Indians. Their pottery was similar in shape and 
pattern. Caribs wore lip ornaments (labrets) like the Alas- 
kans. The custom of abandoning a house when an inmate died 



i8 



THE AMERICAN ANTIQUARIAN. 



was the same in Central America as among many plains Indi- 
ans. The chipping of flint arrow heads was an art transmitted 
from antedeluvian lapidaries, who cut exquisite gems. The 
Mandan bull boats of rawhide and wattles were copies of old 
world coracles. 

But tribes, like families, easily cultivate animosity. Differ- 
erences in intelligence, habits and tastes stimulate social es- 
trangement, though they do not establish physiological dis- 
tinctions. Complexion, features, size and muscular develop- 
ment, are due to climate and foreign admixtures. Natives of 
Cook's Inlet resemble the Athabascans. Haidahs and Az- 
tecs, both use masks and wadded armor like the Japan- 
ese and Egyptians, and they decorate the interiors of their 
houses with symbols and hieroglyphs. Navajo and Thlinket 
blankets are of equal quality and texture. Hakluyt says of 
the people whom he discovered, that they " are white even as 
our men are, saving such as are conversant with the sun." 
The Fillipino is much the same in color as the North American 
Indian, and also has the same straight black hair, high cheek 
bones, and thin beard. The Mayas, inhabiting the Sierra Ne- 
vada mountains in the lower part of Sonora, Mexico, have fair 
skins, blue eyes, and light hair. The Crows of Montana have 
very light complexions. The Croatan Indians of North Caro- 
lina present a very striking phase of a race infusion which took 
place from Sir Walter Raleigh's colony in 1587, which is com- 
paratively recent time. There are a great many similitudes 
besides those of physiognomy to help determine identity. For 
example, family descent in many of the Alaska tribes is reck- 
oned through the mother, and the grafts on the totem poles 
are carved accordingly. The same custom is in vogue among 
our red Indians and is of very ancient origin. Alaskans, In- 
dians and Mexicans all build dwellings without chimneys, the 
same as in Asia and Egypt. They all have their shamans, ma- 
gicians, medicine men and priests, and their religious super- 
stitions and beliefs are much the same. 



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